Most days I am lugging two bags to and from school. I always have grading to do at home and I always bring home at least one textbook to prepare for future lessons. I decided to clean out one of my bags and found some interesting items. Check them out below!

What makes this board so great?​1. Integrates social media in the classroom2. Students immediately relate and feel welcome in the classroom3. Students & parents can see their growth from September-June4. Parents LOVE to come in and see pictures of their children and classmates5. Students create goals and can access/remind themselves of those goals6. Builds confidence seeing themselves displayed7. Encourages creativity in the picture and hashtag-making8. Helps students work on paragraph writing in a less formal writing environment9. Can be turned into an end of the year book! 10. Easy to maintain!

My favorite bulletin board is my "Instagram Board". This is a monthIy rotating board that reflects the Instagram Application. I have used this board for the last two years. It is teacher and time friendly! During the first week of each month I take 5 minutes during snack time to take each student's pictures. Each picture has a theme that relates to the month, for example in December students brought in their favorite Christmas hat, or during Thanksgiving each student held a turkey! Each month a new picture gets added ON TOP of the last picture and creates an interactive board. My students LOVE to flip through the pictures and see their growth from September-June.

I allow my students to be as creative or silly as they want! Under each picture students use a notecard to set a goal for the month or answer a question about what we are learning about. On the first day of school I asked students to choose an inspirational quote and write about HOW they will accomplish that in 5th grade. Students also get the opportunity to make up their own hashtags at bottom on their notecard. Most of the time they are MUCH more creative than the one's I have come up with.

Comment below with your favorite bulletin board idea!

P.S. Don't forget to clarify the difference between a hashtag and number symbol! (#)This misunderstanding created many laughs in my classroom!

Who doesn't love a good surprise? Students can get sucked into our system of structure and order and lose interest. By having an element of surprise during your lesson students will NEVER know what to expect and will ALWAYS be ready to learn. Today as we reviewed for our Social Studies test we played a jeopardy review game. When a student chose "Geography for 200", they chose the daily double! Music started to go off and I announced "Check under you seats!" Students pulled off the daily double question that was taped to the bottom of their chair.

The class was filled with commotion, excitement, and enthusiasm!

If they learned anything today it was that "You never know what Miss Richards will put under your chair!"

All too often I have a line of eager students on both sides of my desk. I do my best to juggle who got their first, who is asking a quick question, who needs immediate attention, who needs more one on one time and the list goes on!

These emoji clothes pins work just like those tickets you get when waiting at the deli. If I am working with a student already than my other students grab the next number in line. I call each student up in number order. This helps me juggle the chaos that can arise at my desk and give each student the amount of attention they deserve.

One of my goals every day is to hear from each one of my students. Whether it is a student answering a question, asking a question or making an on topic comment. But I am guilty of calling on those same students who are ALWAYS eager to participate. I created a "Student Participation Log". My students can keep track of the amount of times THEY participate throughout the day. It challenges those who are less eager to answer a question or ask a question. I can easily walk around and see which students I have already called on and which students I have not.

At the end of each day students can write the number of times they participated that day. The goal is to do ALL three in each subject.

My favorite part about this is that I can reach each student throughout the day, I can formatively assess each student, & no child can slip through the cracks!

In Chapter 8 of "Holes", Louis Sachar gives an in depth description of the infamous yellow-spotted lizards.

How to integrate this activity into class:

1. Read Chapter 8 aloud to your class2. Ask them "Why did Louis Sachar dedicate an entire chapter just to the yellow-spotted lizards?3. Re-read chapter 8 and ask students to close their eyes and imagine what the author is describing.4. Ask students to lock that picture in their brain!5. I passed out blank lizards and had students color the lizard to match the picture they had imagined.6. Then, students found a quote from chapter 8 that supported their image(an example of imagery)7. Last, I had students copy the definition of imagery '"into" their hole.

How often do you hear.. "What page are we on?","Wait, what page?"Even when you write it on the board OR repeat yourself 5 times, students still seem to ask "What page?"

One of the first things I went over this year was a solution to that problem. This is on the top of my board in bright green and blue. Students know exactly where to look & we get back those extra minutes that can be wasted repeating directions.

My students know exactly where to look when we are switching subjects and opening our books. I write the page # we are on AND the book we are working in.

It takes a lot of time to put together a classroom library BUT it is totally worth it!To start you need to:1. Sort books by genre2. Sort books by level3. Build a variety of genres4. AND create a comfortable reading environment :) (especially for those students who are non-readers)

​​This is one of my FAVORITE library accessories. Anyone who visits our classroom, knows EXACTLY what we are reading.

How can we answer that question?This week in 5th grade we had a globe toss! We tossed the globe 100 times and tallied where our left thumb landed: Water or Land? You can get more specific and tally which body of water or which continent you land on. Each student wrote a hypothesis before conducting the class experiment.

Extra Globe Toss Activities:1. Create a pie chart with the class results2. Probability:"What is the probability my thumb will land in water?"3. Percents:"If I toss the globe 50 times and my thumb lands in water 47 times, what is the percentage of times my thumb landed on water?"

Author

I'm Laura, I am beginning my third year as a 5th grade teacher! I have a passion for teaching, engaging, and helping students take ownership of their learning! This is a place where I update and share a sneak peak of my fabulous fifth graders.